


Sometimes Two is better than Three

by Violettavonviolet



Series: Marvel Polyship Bingo [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous Slash, Civil War Team Iron Man, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Falling In Love, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Love Triangles, M/M, Marvel Polyship Bingo, Multi, Not really though, Platonic Soulmates, Polyamory, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Romantic Soulmates, Sad, Sad Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Unrequited Love, im nearly crying, why do ihate myself so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23931568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violettavonviolet/pseuds/Violettavonviolet
Summary: Tony was already turning around when Steve suddenly grapped his arm. Slowly turning back, Tony raised an eyebrow.“What? Do you want to make another hole in my chest?“He received a ‘Captain America is disappointed in you’ stare but he couldn’t care less. “I lost Bucky, why can’t you understand? I lost my soulmate.“Tony gave him a calculated glance before he said“He was my soulmate too, you know.“
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) & Tony Stark
Series: Marvel Polyship Bingo [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660924
Comments: 15
Kudos: 279
Collections: Marvel Polyship Bingo 2020





	Sometimes Two is better than Three

**Author's Note:**

> this is part of my marvel poly ship bingo   
> for the prompt "hero vs hero"
> 
> Hey y'all I am back with a new fanfic!   
> This one is pretty sad, and I have no idea why I wrote it because I detest sadfics, but somehow I still write a lot of them... 
> 
> Anyway, I had a lot of problems coming up with a fic for this prompt, but I hope this is okay. If you have any prompts you'd like to have written pls comment them down below or message me on Tumblr or twitter. You could also just like contact me their, because I am bored and like social contact, u know how it is...  
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/violettavonviolet  
> https://twitter.com/Violettavonvio1  
> so yeah, another fanfic should come tomorrow or on Sunday!

Growing up, his words had been his solace and his bane.   
One of them was so simple he was sure he wouldn’t even notice them, and the other was original enough that the chance of him not noticing was low, very low. 

But that was really it, he had two soulmates and both of them, were by the looks of it dead.   
He grew up, imagining a world were they were alive, were they saved him from his terrible reality but at the end of the day, he always knew that it wouldn’t happen. His father was pleased, a rarity for him. No soulmates meant no distraction from work. 

He couldn’t count the amount of times he cried himself asleep, alone, in a too big house without anybody living in it. In his teens he started to ignore the bothering black letters on his arms, after all does it really matter if both of them are dead?   
No, he decided and partied till dawn.   
It was only after his stint in a cave that his attitude changed again, now instead of ignoring them he tried to be the very best to honor them. He might not know who they were but maybe they could have been proud of him if they were alive. 

Then shortly before his new glorious tower was finished, one of his marks changed color. Suddenly it wasn’t black but blue, the sign of a living soulmate. His heart nearly stopped beating when he noticed it, and his mind was racing. 

Could his soulmate be almost forty years younger than him?   
Fate couldn’t be so cruel, could it? He never did much research on the topic and now it seemed that had been a mistake. He let Jarvis research it but to no avail. It remained a mystery and Tony didn’t even get the time to dwell on it, instead an agent visited him, giving hi a file and then he was on his way to Stuttgart. He had done his homework on the topic, so he wasn’t overly surprised when he encountered Captain America.

What was a surprise, were the words coming out of his mouth. His soulmates first words to be exact. He didn’t show it of course, not in front of an enemy, but neither did the Captain. Even later on the helicarrier Cap didn’t mention it so Tony let t slide. His words were probably very common too, and maybe it was just a coincidence. Everyone knew that Captain Americas soulmate had been Bucky Barnes, the loyal sidekick that died at the end.   
So maybe they really weren’t soulmates and Tony was just imagining stuff again. 

He never said a word and neither did Steve. 

Over the following years, they became dare he say it, friends. They bantered and they laughed and they worked together on missions but nothing. Did that hurt Tony? A little. Did he do anything about it? No.   
He understood why somebody like Steve didn’t want somebody like him as a soulmate, especially in comparison to someone as great as Bucky Barnes. 

Ultron happened and this time Tony was actually hurt, how fast everybody had turned on him. Acting as if this had been his idea and his idea only. 

As if he had wanted that! And then Steve invited that witch to join the team, to live in his home, eat his food and all in all live completely on his expense.   
Additionally, Jarvis was gone and he hurt. He hurt like he never did before, his child and his most loyal creation was gone, and everyone acted as if Vision was just as good. 

Sure Vision was nice, but he wasn’t Jarvis. 

He had his voice and that hurt nearly as much as the witch that he was currently housing. He could barely be in the same room as vision without starting to cry. It was pathetic but he imagined that that was how it was for every parent that lost a child. HIs nightmares got worse, to a level were he would not sleep for over five days straight simply out of fear. He was overworked, trying to handle the accords, the damages done not only by Ultron but also by the witch and keeping Stark Industries afloat.   
And Steve just disappeared to go find Bucky.   
Tony understood, he really did. Bucky was worth a thousand Tonys at least but he had needed Steve none the less. In hindsight they had never really been friends, more colleagues that fought a lot. How he hadn’t seen it before, he didn’t know. 

He financed the complete search, everything for the Captain. 

All the while voices screamed, demanded for heroes to take responsibility for their actions got louder. He thought that he finally did something good, working with the government and the countries but his team apparently thought otherwise. It ended in a fight, of course it did.   
He was on one side the captain o the other. He had finally found Bucky it seemed, but it didn’t help his cause at all. 

The fought ended like it always did, with somebody getting hurt.   
This time it was his Rhodey, the one person that stood with him trough everything. He would never stand again, not with todays technology.   
Tony would change that the second he had even a blink of time, everything for his Honeybear.  
But first he needed to follow Steve. They were in Siberia of all places, and Tony was honestly coming in peace. He never wanted to fight especially not the captain. But then he saw It, the murder of his mother and he was gone, he didn’t think anymore. The killer of his mother was less than three feet away from him so he lunged forward and attacked.   
The fight was long and hard, but nothing topped the moment he first talked to Bucky. 

“Do you even remember them?“ He had screamed in fury, even if it didn’t matter in the end.   
The next words were engraved in his arm. “I remember all of them“.  
A sentence he had always wondered about. Now their meaning was pure torture.   
The weapon that killed his mother was his soulmate, and the words a bitter reminder of his deeds. He kept fighting and so did Bucky. Tony was about ninety percent sure that Bucky didn’t even know that they were soulmates. HIs words had been on the arm that was now made of metal. Hell the guy couldn’t even remember his own name.

Steve pounded his shield into his chest, his arc reactor, his heart. It disabled the suit, but you couldn’t hit someone with a vibranium shield without hurting them a lot, even in an armor.

Later, lying in the icy cold of Siberia he laughed bitterly, the taste of irony blood on his tongue.   
“He’s my soulmate, Tony“   
Steve had said,   
“So am I“   
Tony would have liked to answer but he kept quiet, like he always did. 

They were a triad, of course. He never deserved either of them, no wonder Steve never said a word, he was probably disgusted by their third. 

He laughed until he cried and he cried until he passed out. 

When he woke up, the icy cold was all that greeted him. Nobody had come, and nobody would for a while. So Tony got up, peeled himself out of his suit, shivering as the rest of the warmth he had disappeared.   
Clad only in his undersuit, he began working on his task.   
He somehow got the GPS to start working again, fueled by his emergency battery, which sent a signal to Friday who would undoubtedly send an armor his way.   
It could take a few hours so Tony explored the bunker for a bit. 

There was nothing useful left, besides a few blankets. He didn’t know how he survived for the next few hours but he did. When the suit arrived his toes were blue and his teeth were chattering so hard he feared one of them might break. 

Luckily he got away without any major disabilities, besides one of his toes who sadly had to be removed. It had been to late for it.   
That’s what you got for staying in only a thin undersuit in the Siberian cold for about ten hours. He didn’t think about it too much, he had work to do.   
First Rhodey’s new exoskeleton and then something for triggers in the brain. He did it for himself just as much as he did it for Bucky. They were soulmates after all, it didn’t matter all that much anymore seeing as both of his soulmates had rejected him, and really what did that say about Tony? Literal parts of his soul didn’t think him worthy of them. 

It was probably not healthy, but when was it ever.   
He prepared for what was coming as much as he could, he just knew that it was coming but he got a mean stomach ache whenever he thought about it too much. 

Plus the panic attacks, all the panic attacks.   
Honestly he counted it as a good day whenever he got through it with less than three.   
He had so many triggers tat it was astounding how he got up in the morning.   
The cold was the most recent even if he hadn’t like it much before either, heat was another thanks to his little vacation in the desert and his subsequent walking for two days around in the sun right after, water after his waterboarding experience and night or space really, which was unfortunate because he had o fly even if it was dark.   
He was one of three legal avengers and Rhodey wasn’t even allowed to fly again, yet.   
So he was back to non stop working and avoiding sleep as much as humanly possible. 

He had so much to do, who even had time for sleep? He still did stuff for Stark industries, he was the head of R&D and the major share holder after all. Then he did his avenging stint, mostly alone because Vision spent most of his time ‚secretly’ meeting Wanda as if Tony didn’t know. 

There was the whole preparing for an alien invasion stuff and he was trying to bring back the avengers even though his therapists would probably scream if he had to go back to such a toxic environment.  
No matter, they were needed for the invasion, what even was his life and health in comparison to the lives of thousands, millions?

He ignored the increasingly worried looks he received from Platypus and Pepper, what did they know? Nobody could or would help him, so he did it alone. 

He was only the tiniest bit happy when Thor confirmed his fear of an invasion. Take that hater, who had declared him crazy because of his fear.   
Then the shittiest year of his live began, Thanos came and even when they gave their best, they lost. They lost and the Spiderkid disappeared before his eyes, turning to dust on his hands.   
He arrived back on earth weeks later, after a fiery woman brought him and nebula back and he was done.   
On earth only more bad news waited for him, Bucky had disappeared. His soulmate was gone. 

They might not have talked, or really done much together but he knew that Bucky had appreciated B.A.R.F. They had even written a few mails to each other before everything went down. Tony had already imagined how it would be when the avengers came back, that he would get to know Bucky more and maybe just maybe become friends, platonic soulmates if he can’t have the other. He like Bucky enough, after he got over the whole you killed my mom stick.   
It was like a slap in the face that he only got informed about Bucky by a less than pleased Natasha. 

So he gave up, finally.

He couldn’t anymore, he had worked so much, cared so much but it was useless in the end. 

As soon as he could, he disappeared, finally done with this shit. 

He had bought a nice little house in the woods a long time ago, before Ultron before Loki, before Ironman, while he still had no care in the world and only inventions on his mind. He forgot about it all together until he found documents about it a year ago.   
He lived like a hermit, only going out as necessary and mostly just disappearing in his workshop, FRIDAY and the bots being his only companion.   
He liked the live he had, it was simpler and he was finally free from all the burdens. Sure he was lonely, so incredibly lonely, but he got over it quickly enough.   
He still cried himself to sleep, like he had for many many years, never really having stopped, but he could ignore it like he ignored everything else. 

Years went by but Tony barely gave them any notice, he knew he wouldn’t have a long live, the superhero stint and the arc reactor that was once again in his chest ensured that, but at least his life was finally quiet. 

Then one day an unfamiliar car drove up his driveway. Startled by the noise, he walked out of the garage only to find Natasha, Steve and Scott walking up to him.   
He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and quickly ran a hand through his hair. 

“Widow, Captain, Tic Tac-“ 

“Hey man, come on“ 

“-how nice of you to visit. Why?“

“Come on now Tony, can’t we visit an old friend just because?“  
Natasha asked, her voice betraying no emotion but her eyes glinting with disdain. 

“You can, but you don’t. Why did you come?“ Tony got annoyed, he knew that they wanted something from him, they always did. 

“Tony, Scott had an idea. We can make everything right again.“

Scott went on to explain his idea, which really could possibly work, but Tony didn’t want to get his hope up, so he shook his head, he couldn’t take another fail.   
Natasha clicked her tongue in displeasure,   
“can you not once ignore your ego, and do what is right?“   
“It seems so.“   
Tony was already turning around when Steve suddenly grapped his arm. Slowly turning back, Tony raised an eyebrow.   
“What? Do you want to make another hole in my chest?“

He received a ‘Captain America is disappointed in you’ stare but he couldn’t care less. “I lost Bucky, why can’t you understand? I lost my soulmate.“ 

Tony gave him a calculated glance before he said   
“He was my soulmate too, you know.“  
He quickly turned again and left.   
He wouldn’t get a panic attack again, he had finally gone a week without, this wasn’t going to ruin it. He ignored the calls behind his back as he strolled back inside, locking the door behind him even though he knew it would ultimately be useless if the Captain decided that he wanted to come inside. 

Nobody followed him, which was good.   
He was awake all night trying to ignore the voices of doubt in his head, which was bad. He spent the entire next day working on Scotts theory, until he realized that this could actually work.   
So he spent even more time working on it, until he was sufficiently sure that this would work before leaving his house and driving to the compound.   
Steve had already awaited him but they didn’t exchange a word. He started working immediately. 

The only one he really talked to was Bruce and sometimes Scott, who both helped a lot especially Scotts knowledge of the quantum realm.   
It was almost like old times, but it also totally wasn’t. It would never be the same again. 

Their plan worked out in the end, they saved everyone like heroes always do. He saw Steve reunite with Bucky on the battlefield and almost smiled, in another world under different circumstances they could have been a real couple but in this world it was impossible.   
Just as his death was inevitable. He always knew that somebody would have to utilize the gauntlet and he always knew that he wouldn’t allow it to be anyone else.   
At least his soulmates could be happy. 

So he took the gauntlet and fulfilled his destiny.

They won, he lost. 

But in the end, he thought, that maybe he had won just as much, knowing that Steve and Bucky could finally be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is it!   
> Did you like it? Any thoughts comments or anything else you'd like to say? then pls leave a comment down below, they make my day!   
> Next fic is out either Saturday or Sunday,   
> Bye,   
> Vio


End file.
